After a lifetime of swaggering and dissembling his way through one scandal after another on the strength of his prodigious political skills, Boris Johnson has finally reached the end. It seems that the laws of gravity apply to him after all
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom poses near a bust of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during a visit to the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Sept. 22, 2021. Johnson said on Thursday, July 7, 2022, that he would step down as prime minister, after a wholesale rebellion of his cabinet, a wave of government resignations and a devastating loss of party support prompted by his handling of the party’s latest sex-and-bullying scandal. (Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times)
After a lifetime of swaggering and dissembling his way through one scandal after another on the strength of his prodigious political skills — a potent mix of charm, guile, ruthlessness, hubris, oratorical dexterity and rumpled Wodehousian bluster — Boris Johnson has finally reached the end. It seems that the laws of gravity apply to him after all.
It’s not that he ever fooled anyone about who he really was. Over the years, he has routinely been described as mendacious, irresponsible, reckless and lacking any coherent philosophy other than wanting to seize and hold on to power.
“People have known that Boris Johnson lies for 30 years,” writer and academic Rory Stewart, a former Conservative member of Parliament, said recently. “He’s probably the best liar we’ve ever had as a prime minister. He knows a hundred different ways to lie.”
In contrast to former President Donald Trump, another politician with an improvisational and often distant relationship to the truth, Johnson’s approach has rarely been to double down on his lies or to delude himself for consistency’s sake into acting as if they were true. Rather, he recasts them to fit new information that comes to light, as if the truth were a fungible concept, no more solid than quicksand.
Mislead, omit, obfuscate, bluster, deny, deflect, attack, apologize while implying that he has done nothing wrong — the British prime minister’s blueprint for dealing with a crisis, his critics say, almost never begins, and rarely ends, with simply telling the truth. That approach worked for him for years — until finally it didn't.
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